Valkyria Chronicles – 15

After what happened in Fouzen, everyone in Squad 7 is feeling down, and given the toll on the other forces of the militia, Varrot decides that they should hold a party. In talking about the situation, Welkin mentions that he’s worried about everyone, and Faldio admits that he has someone to heal his heart in painful times: Alicia. He questions if Welkin is okay with this, causing Welkin to reassert that he and Alicia are just superior officer and subordinate. Welkin then goes to tell Squad 7 about the party and how they need to put on a performance. Everyone thinks Rosie’s singing would be perfect, but she refuses to sing in front of a Darcsen. After Rosie walks off, Alicia wants to give chase, but Welkin decides that he and he alone will go try to change her mind, causing Alicia to think that Welkin is acting strange. Unfortunately, Welkin is unable to convince Rosie and doesn’t want to order her to sing. Isara meanwhile thinks about what Rosie said and decides to confront her about it. She wants Rosie to see her as not a Darcsen but as herself, however Rosie doesn’t want to talk, so Isara accuses her of running away.

This gets Rosie angry, so she tells Isara about her past. Back when she was young, the Empire was hunting Darcsens, and her parents reluctantly gave refuge to a trio of armed Darcsens. When a soldier came to investigate, the Darcsens panicked and slaughtered everyone, and Rosie survived only thanks too her mother. She now admits that she knows that Isara isn’t at fault, but her heart refuses to listen. All of this shocks Isara, and because she wants Rosie to sing for everyone, she offers to not go to the party. When Welkin finds out, he initially refuses to accept Isara’s non-participation, but she convinces him to let her do this. Alicia isn’t happy about it because it’s not like Welkin to give up, and she goes on to question why he doesn’t rely on her in times like these since she’s his aide. Welkin just insists that it’s his decision, causing Alicia to become angry, and she finds and complains to Faldio. After finding Isara by herself and talking to her, Faldio drags her to the party, and Rosie sees the two of them as she’s about to go on stage. Faldio emphasizes that everyone has been ordered to attend, so Rosie raises no objections and proceeds, though she does tell Isara that tonight is special and that she’s singing for everyone.

Afterward, Alicia finds Faldio backstage and thanks him. When she gets up to go though, he stops her and confesses his feelings for her.

Preview

The Rosie parts of this episode seemed rather trivial to me. I mean, it was nice to finally see her past, and I can understand that she was traumatized and has deep emotional wounds, but it seems wasteful for them to focus an entire episode on her raising such a fuss about something as minor as singing in front of someone like Isara who she should be fine with by now. They could have just inserted Rosie’s past into the Fouzen story and it would have worked out all the same since she still hasn’t gotten over her prejudice by the end of this episode.

Having said all that, Rosie’s story did serve as a decent way to show more of Welkin’s impotency and Faldio’s ability to step up and get things done, and it culminated/cliffhangered nicely with Faldio’s confession to Alicia. I’d love for them to surprise me and have Alicia actually reciprocate Faldio’s feelings (especially since Faldio has been a lot stronger as a male lead than Welkin), but I suspect that she’ll instead delay answering him and ultimately reject him once Welkin finally gets his balls back. This might take a while though as it appears that the director and writers are spreading out the love triangle stuff over all the side-character arcs, with next week being apparently about Largo and Varrot and their history together.

@Omni:
well, not wanna disagree with your impression or wanna spoil anything but if they do indeed stay true to the game then it was necessary to show it. just wait for couple of more episodes and you’ll understand what i mean :)

The Rosie set-up isn’t as poorly placed as it looks. On the other hand, saying that is a bit disingenuous, especially if that portion of the plot has been altered. Suffice to say, few of the issues seen in Fouzen are off the table.

in regards to rosie i have to say her prejudices are protrayed a bit more realistically than in other shows, as prejudice often manifests itself through trivial excuses and generally being petty over minor things, along with lumping people all into one basket based on the past actions of a few

This is getting stupid, why the hell can’t they just stick to the game? They’ve already changed way too many things. Faldio confessing? Srsly? GTFO. Some writers need to be shot. I can’t for the life of me understand the need to turn Welkin into some indecidive idiot and shoot Faldios part in the story through the roof when in fact he’s such a minor character in the overall game story. It’s reached retarded levels now.

Why must there be this need to have a love triangle in every god damn thing now? In the process making a good story into crap as time goes on. How can the Sega people let this shit happen to their work? But I guess enough money will make you turn a blind eye.

Man. I really don’t understand what happened to Welkin. When my childhood friend started being attracted to a complete jerk in my class when I was in H.S even though I had feelings for her I didn’t like it but I still helped her get with him. When they spent the night together I was pissed off at myself but it didn’t change my behavior because it wasn’t worth it. I hated the guy but she liked him so there wasn’t anything I could do about it so I moved on. If I had slumped because of that my results would have suffered. That’s to say that Welkin is an idiot. In my case I just had to worry about getting accepted in a good university but he has friggin’ lives depending on him! hasn’t he joined the militia to “end the war quickly”, well apparently he forgot about that… He hasn’t talked about nature in a while, yet even his sister doesn’t seem to have noticed that something was wrong it him…
The only way out of this are possibly:
_ Someone dies because of his current state.
_ Alicia has a serious talk with him.
_He gets some sense beaten into him. Preferably by Faldio.

Don’t worry Satoida, this doesn’t happen in the game so you can guess whatever you like.

I can’t remember exactly, but I thought it was implied that the imperial hunters killed her family, not the darcsens. I know it happened during a darcsen hunt and that she blamed the darcsen because if they hadn’t been there then her parents wouldn’t have been killed by the hunters.

The deviation from the game is getting a bit too anime-cliche for my taste. The Love triangle, totally unnecessary! Especially with Faldio singing Welkin’s praises in the earlier episodes. Yeah yeah, they need filler during the 23 hours of boredom and the 1 hour of terror (military-maxim), but Welkin’s complete obliviousness was perfect! It fits his character way better than some lump of clay.

Fuck this anime, I’ll stick with the book! (But since I love the game so much, I’ll continue my watching)

I am beginning to think Faldio is just trying to move things up between Welkin and Alicia. No one knows Welkin better than Faldio and I think he is trying to push Welkin into realizing his feelings. He knows that what Welkin says and feels are completely different because he immediately realized the reason for Welkin’s slump in the previous episode. But it also seems he want’s try take Alicia away becase Welkin but her in a dangerous situation. I think Faldio is testing Welkin to know if he doe love Alicia or if he just thinks of her as his subordinate.

I’ll joint the chorus saying Welkin really seems to have become socially inept. Really, if he doesn’t realize his current indecision is going to get others killed (which I think already happened), he shouldn’t be given a leadership.

As to Faldio, I think we should consider that he may have already backed off in a prior romantic pursuit. Remember the girl that got married but gave Welkin a second chance. I believe it was implied that Faldio also went after her but backed off only to see Welkin piss off the opportunity.

I don’t blame Faldio for his actions. If Alicia doesn’t address the problem, the story is going to become really lame. It will become a tripe romance drama and take away from the actual story. IMHO.

Surprise us eh? You mean after the new OP basically spoiled everyone eh?

Faldio doesn’t have to put the moves on Alicia to get Welkin to act, he can do the same thing by just informing Alicia about it. Or setup more situations where the two can be alone again like in the cabin a few eps back. Only time will tell what the writers are thinking, but the game did a fine enough job of working Welkin and Alicia together without any “help” from Faldio. Hell, he’s basically not around for most of the game anyways.

Yay for the anime doing the Largo backstory. I wonder if they will still throw in a beach episode or something.

I really like the progression of the love triangle. When I originally heard one was going to be incorporated into the anime I was preety skeptical, but I am glad they have done it in this manner rather than two girls chasing after Welkin.

Welkin’s decision WILL kill someone, and in order to make that truly blossom into a heart-rending moment, the writers probably decided to incorporate this.

As for Faldio, it just adds a layer of tragedy over what will happen.

And about the op? The naive audience (the ones that haven’t played the game) has yet to find out how she comes to realize she’s a Valkyria.
I also want to point out Isara never hearing Rosie sing. They are sticking to the game story, albeit loosely.

Lets just say Faldio isn’t actually in love with Alicia. There is a reason behind it. If you think about it it was kind of odd how he asked how far Welkin got with Alicia when they were alone in the cabin and in the next episode he is started to make a move. Remember where Faldio went the 2nd time right beofore he started to make a move on Alicia. It is something related to the opening. Skimming through the game walkthrough I noticed anime is following pretty closely to the game.

I am really just not liking what they are doing with this anime at all. I mean, at no point during the game was Welkin shown to ‘impotent’. I don’t see why they are going out of there way to make Faldio Welkin’s rival, when they were nothing but good friends in the game, until a certain incident happens, which will just seem so ridiculously out character in the anime, it’s not even funny. And I CAN’T stand how Welkin and Alicia’s relationship is being handled. It was explicitly clear from early on that Alicia and Welkin were an item, but here, they just had to throw in this tsundere female/indecisive male bullcrap. Please, I implore anyone that has a PS3 to actually go out, buy, and play the much superior game version.

As someone who’s played the game, I have to say I actually like the love triangle they’re going for; I mean, who wants to see the exact same thing they saw in the game, right? That said though, I would love it if Welkin started to step up and all.

IMO, it’s easy to complain about how the game/anime aren’t the same, but you have to remember; it’s hard to show how someone is 24/7 during a game. There’s only select moments like downtime before battles and what not. I’m sure Welkin wasn’t ’100% Gung-ho I can do this’ all throughout the game, and the writers are just trying to find reasons to show that even he has his major flaws. I’m not defending bad writing or anything, but I’m saying that they may have their reasons for going with this route with the ‘love triangle.’

Geez, people that haven’t played the game should just stop reading these comments until the animes over. Nobody outright posts spoilers, but they’re so easily inferred, you can just add 2 and 2 together.

yeah, as long as the ending is there im okay with it but what’s been happening in the anime (with the faldio-alicia-welkin love triangle) is really making me addictedly obessed to this series. i really love romantic animes (considering im a girl).

To all of those who bitch about how anime and the game is different: go f*** yourself! I also played the game but you’re way too annoying. You think you show yourself as a superior being but in fact you just suck and fail big time. Still cannot get over it and contine bitching? Go cry to your mama and play the game for 12 more times. Yes I’m telling this to ALL of “anime is meh” bitches. Also don’t like, don’t watch. You stupid kiddies (even though you’re not a kid, your mental age is below 10). Let the others who love the anime enjoy and leave them alone!

This anime is total crap. Just what they did to Welkins character is pathetic, I can already see script-writers selling Ice-creams, because it is obvious that they are incapable of script-writing. Well maybe as a parody.

And those who call it original need to go and read any bad shoujo triangle romance and you will see that it is basically the same shoujo shit repeated in here.

First, I ‘ll admit to not having played the game. I’m looking at the anime on its own merits. As far as the WFA triangle goes, it’s much easier to root for Faldio, because Welkin is absolutely lame. It seems from the comment that this is not the case in the game, but in the anime, Faldio has taken over as the strong male lead here. I would not have a problem if Alicia went for Faldio, except for that in the earlier episodes, it was made clear this would not happen. That’s the only reason to object to the love triangle: there’s no real tension when you already know how things are going to turn out.

As for Rosie, I really haven’t been impressed with how the show protrays her prejudices. It’s very intermittent, and it seems only to come up when the writers need it for a (very pathetic, usually) attempt at emotional conflict and or a plot device to set off Welkin and Alicia, which honestly doesn’t work when Welkin is acting like such a loser.

I believe what the gamers are kinda annoyed at is that in the game Welkin is pretty much a hybrid oh Kamina’s leadership with Rousso’s tactics (in terms of gurran lagann anyway), which is to say pretty godly. Here in the anime he’s pretty lame. So basically you can understand why we’re annoyed.

then again, i’m also annoyed at the people who’ve played the game and are pretty much rubbing spoilers in everybody’s face, even if they’re trying to keep to themselves.

“I’d love for them to surprise me and have Alicia actually reciprocate Faldio’s feelings (especially since Faldio has been a lot stronger as a male lead than Welkin), but I suspect that she’ll instead delay answering him and ultimately reject him once Welkin finally gets his balls back.”

You sound like you think you have balls, fag. I bet you haven’t confessed once in your life, considering you blog about anime.

@roger and all other games & walkthrough readers:
Stay out of the comment section if you’re unable to keep spoilers/hints for yourself. You’re really ruining it for those of us who are only following the anime.

Yeah, I have watched the game walkthroughs and I find that the gamers forcing spoilers and opinions upon others who just watched the anime to be very annoying. I don’t like to hear the “insert comment about how the game is so much better than the anime”. This anime is not as bad as some of the gamers implied. Seriously, most gamers are just hanged up on the game’s “awesomeness” to appreciate a fairly decent anime.

Don’t blame everyone. I never played the game either. So mine are also assumptions. What got me to look at the walkthrough was just out of no where Faldio is trying to make a move on Alicia. My curiosity got the better of me. Anime is pretty good in my opinion. I really don’t see what’s so awesome about the game over the anime. From what I skimmed through the anime is basically the same with the unnnecessary stuff cut out and with a few changes here and there. From what I can make out only one thing is confirmed.